The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue collar America- supporting laws and policies that benefitted that segment of the U.S. population. Their leaders may still claim to be advocates for American working families, however their duplicitous actions that betray American workers and their families, while undermining national security and public safety, provide clear and incontrovertible evidence of their lies…. MICHAEL CUTLER …FRONTPAGE mag

2003: Mexican population in U.S. reported to have increased 10 percentin just three years, mostly as a result of illegal immigration. Mexicans encouraged to breed at all costs. "A baby a year" Mexican pride slogan emerges …EVERY ANCHOR BABY GETS MORE WELFARE FOR 18 YEARS. THAT CHILD IS ALSO STILL A CITIZEN OF MEXICO!

“Through love of having children, we are going to take over.”AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY

The birthrate among illegals is more than double that of legal US residents.The Pew Hispanic Center calculates that within seven years, the children of immigrants, legal and illegal, will account for one in nine school-age children in the US.

WASHINGTON, DC (May 31, 2016) — An analysis of new government data by the Center for Immigration Studies shows more than 3 million new legal and illegal immigrants settled in the United States over the course of 2014 and 2015 – a 39 percent increase over the prior two-year period. (The Census Bureau groups data like this to preserve anonymity.) The number of arrivals fell to a low in 2010-2011, but has dramatically rebounded and is now above pre-recession levels. The Center estimates that 1.1 million of the arrivals are new illegal immigrants and 2 million are new legal immigrants. Cutbacks in enforcement, an improved economy, and the expansive nature of our legal immigration system likely have all contributed to the rebound.

The Center for Immigration Studies’ Director of Research and the lead author of the report, Dr. Steven Camarota, observes, “The numbers show that Mexican immigration has rebounded somewhat and there has been a dramatic rise in immigration from Asia and the rest of Latin America.” Camarota also points out that, “Given the enormous number of immigrants settling in the country, it is certainly understandable that immigration levels are a central issue in the presidential election.”

New data collected by the Census Bureau shows that 3.1 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) entered the country in 2014 and 2015, an average of more than 1.5 million annually.

In 2012 and 2013, 2.3 million immigrants arrived, or about 1.1 million annually. In 2010-2011, 2.1 new immigrants arrived, or about 1 million annually.

All of these numbers are based on publically available information in Census Bureau data; no adjustments have been made for those missed by the bureau. But even without adjusting for undercount, the scale of new immigration is enormous.

The big increase in new arrivals in the last two years was driven by a rise in immigration from Latin America (particularly countries other than Mexico), South Asia (e.g. Pakistan and India) and East Asia (e.g. China and Vietnam).

Of the 3.1 million immigrants who arrived in the last two years, we estimate about one-third – 1.1 million, or 550,000 annually – were new illegal immigrants, a 57 percent increase from the 700,000 (350,000 annually) who entered in 2012-2013.

The above estimate of illegal immigration represents the flow of new illegal aliens surreptitiously crossing the border or overstaying a temporary visa or released into the country after a short detention, such as families from Central America. The numbers do not represent the net increase in the total illegal immigrant population.

The available evidence also indicates that the number of new legal immigrants arriving from abroad has increased, both temporary and permanent. Our best estimate is that the arrival of legal immigrants increased about 30 percent, from 1.6 million in 2012-2013 to 2 million in 2014-2015.

We’ve got an even more ominous enemy withinour borders that promotes “Reconquista of Aztlan”or the reconquest of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas into the country of Mexico.

THE LA RAZA MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE half the prison population in CA and half the murders are by MEXICANS

40% of Federal Criminal Cases in 2013 Were in Districts on Mexican Border

“At the hearing, Dr. Rakesh Kochar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew HispanicCenter, testified that in the year following the official end of the recession (June 2009), foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost an additional 1.2 million jobs.”

$10M of cocaine found in tour bus driven from Mexico

A police cruiser. Photo by John Schreiber.A tour bus driven across the U.S.-Mexico border early Tuesday was trailed to a Wilmington auto shop and found to have 182 pounds of cocaine — with a street value of about $10 million — stashed in a hidden compartment, authorities said.
Three suspects were arrested when authorities served a search warrant at the shop later in the morning.

The contraband was hidden in a compartment fashioned over the left rear wheel well , said El Segundo police Lt. Carlos Mendoza, a member of LA IMPACT — the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force.

The task force is compromised of investigators from a multitude of local, state and federal agencies.Mendoza said the bus had been observed crossing the U.S.-Mexico border numerous times in the past. The vehicle aroused suspicion because it was not seen carrying passengers.

When the bus crossed the border at San Ysidro at 4 a.m. Tuesday, investigators followed it to the Wilmington auto shop in the 500 block of North Avalon Boulevard, said Mendoza.

After the bus arrived at the shop, two people were seen offloading cargo taken from the left rear wheel well of the bus, according to Mendoza. The hidden compartment had not been detected during a search of the bus at the border, he said.

Investigators served a search warrant at the business at 9 a.m.

Three people — identified as Victor Fainz Miranda, Jaime Jimenez, and Humberto Vazquez — were taken into custody, according to Rachele Huennenkens, press secretary for Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Inaugurated in July 1991, LA IMPACT is tasked with investigating major crimes in Los Angeles County, with an emphasis on dismantling mid- to major- level drug trafficking organizations.

VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY and the MEX WELFARE STATE IN AMERICA'S OPEN BORDERS?

"This is the other Mexico," he said of the United States, which is home to an estimated 11 million Mexican immigrants.

By Kevin Martinez and Adam Mclean 26 May 2016

Democratic Governor of California Jerry Brown has backed a $2 billion plan from the state senate to ostensibly reduce the state’s homeless population, which is the largest in the country. Brown’s plan would entail raising state funds with bonds, which would be paid back in 20 to 30 years with money allocated from Proposition 63, approved by voters in 2004.

BLOG: NEARLY HALF OF THE STATE'S 35 MILLION ARE MEXICAN ILLEGALS OR THE ANCHOR CHILDREN OF ILLEGALS.

The so-called “millionaires’ tax” was originally meant to fund mental health services. It will now be used to fund 10,000 to 14,000 new housing units, even though the total homeless population in the state is 116,000. Even if the proposal is enacted and the homes are built, less than a tenth of the state’s homeless would find shelter under this plan.

The Prop 63 tax does not even make a dent in the fortunes of the rich. Only the wealthiest 0.1 percent of California’s taxpayers, about 30,000 people who earn more than $1 million a year, will have to pay a tax rate of 10.3 percent on every dollar they make over $1 million, instead of the usual 9.3 percent. The high cost of living in the state combined with high rents and unaffordable housing has condemned tens of thousands to a life on the streets. That, combined with massive unemployment and poverty-wage jobs, as well as the evisceration of any social safety net, has ensured a human catastrophe unequaled since the Great Depression.

California accounts for 20 percent of the nation’s homeless, and, given the cost of living in the state, it is not hard to determine why. Since the start of this year, rent has increased 6.7 percent in Los Angeles alone, with the average two-bedroom apartment costing $2,650 a month, according to Apartment List. This is not even the most expensive city in California. In San Francisco, rent for a two-bedroom apartment averages $4,760.

BLOG: THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES HAS A ONE BILLION DOLLAR YEARLY MEXICAN ANCHOR BABY WELFARE COST

Los Angeles County has the largest homeless population in the state, but the bond money from this plan would not solve the problem. Officials have set aside $150 million for homeless services, but estimate that it would take 15,341 more permanent housing units to seriously address the homeless population’s needs, or more than double what is currently allocated.

The city of Los Angeles has already approved an oft-touted $1.87 billion plan to address homelessness by Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti, though this plan has yet to be implemented and officials are still unclear on how they plan to fund it.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, affectionately called “America’s Finest City,” authorities have begun a crackdown on boats and RVs parked on the streets containing homeless people. A two-year old law which prevents large campers from being stationary in parking spots near the beach became permanent law last week.

The law essentially criminalizes the homeless and pushes some onto the street when they would rather be living in their cars. While other coastal cities applied similar bans, San Diego had to wait until a law was crafted to cover the entire county.

The fact that the money for the current plan is not coming from any new source is also telling. Money that was originally allocated for the mentally ill is now to be spent on a different, but completely connected social problem. An estimated 30 percent of homeless people have some form of mental illness.

Nonetheless, this has not stopped Brown and state Democrats from utilizing their “solution” to the homeless crisis for the most cynical of reasons, improving the “progressive” image of the party before the November elections. This has prompted former Senate President pro-tem Darrell Steinberg to declare, “Homelessness knows no partisan lines” and to advocate working with the Republicans to pass the deal.

Brown has a long record of working with development and housing companies to secure higher profits and smoother business at the expense of the working class, going all the way back to his time as mayor of Oakland.

In vetoing AB1229, a proposed 2013 bill that would have mandated developers to invest a minimum in low-income housing projects, Brown offered the market-oriented explanation: “As mayor of Oakland, I saw how difficult it can be to attract development to low and middle income communities. Requiring developers to include below-market units in their projects can exacerbate these challenges…”

He continues this today. The current proposal he is backing may come bundled with additional “reforms” that would launch deeper attacks against the working class. In his administration’s most recent May budget revision, Brown contemplates adding to the proposal:

“…additional legislation requiring ministerial ‘by right’ land use entitlements for multifamily infill housing developments that include affordable housing. This would help constrain development costs, improve the pace of housing production, and encourage an increase in housing supply.”

In this context, “by right” refers to the freedom of developers to take certain actions without a normally required permit, typically issued after a municipal review process. This is tantamount to eliminating what rules exist to ensure basic living standards for low income tenants, which could include everything from utilities to the stability of the buildings themselves.

This section of the May revision finishes, somewhat ominously, with, “It is counterproductive to continue providing funding for affordable housing under a system that slows down approvals in areas already vetted and zoned for housing.” This is a thinly veiled assertion that current funding for low income housing–certainly not limited to this proposal–will be put on the chopping block if such deregulation is not enacted.

The money would be awarded on a competitive grant basis, meaning counties would have to fight one another to receive the largest share. This is not unlike President Obama’s education “reforms,” which force schools to compete for federal funds.

Not only does this proposal do nothing to address the roots causes of homelessness, namely capitalism, but it is tied to reforms that will ultimately result in even greater attacks on the working class. It provides further proof that the Democratic Party, no less than the Republican, is an instrument of Wall Street through and through.

May 26, 2016

Would Obama Trump The Donald by pardoning illegals?

With every passing day, Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency increase.Hillary Clinton's campaign is floundering. She has no message aside from "Elect me; I'm a woman." She is hated by 30 to 40% of Democratic voters who prefer Bernie Sanders – or, for that matter, anybody but her. Her e-mail problems are growing worse – from the inspector general's recent report to the ongoing FBI investigation. And Trump has indicated that he is willing to use every single bit of dirt from her 30-year-long trail of sleaze against her in the general campaign.

One of Trump's primary issues, and an issue that is the cause of much his popularity, is his promise to end illegal immigration and deport some 12 to 20 million illegals already in the U.S. It's an issue that resonates broadly with the white working class, whose standard of living has been steadily eroded by offshoring jobs to China and Mexico.

The Obama administration's policy of letting illegals from a third-world country stay in the U.S. to compete with native-born Americans for jobs and government benefits adds insult to injury.

As Trump's chances of winning increase, it's time to start asking a pretty important question: what will a lame-duck Obama do between November and January if Trump does actually win?

My guess is that Obama will pardon a substantial number (if not all) of the illegals to sabotage Trump's deportation plan.Here's why I think it could happen. First, "Improper Entry by Alien" is a pardonable offense against the United States. Eight U.S. Code Sec. 1325 defines it as a crime with prison sentences ranging from 6 months to 2 years; thus, the president does have the power under Article II of the Constitution to grant pardons for it.

Second, Obama has consistently sided with foreigners against American interests. Refusal to deport large numbers of illegals is one example, but there are numerous others.

Obama told Russian president Medvedev that he would be "more flexible after his last election." His national security adviser recently admitted that the press and the public were intentionally hoodwinked on the Iran nuclear deal. Obama bowed to Saudi princes and apologized to Iran for the 1953 Mossadegh coup. He bypassed Congress and allied with the British and French to attack Libya. He announced in Berlin in 2008 that he is a "citizen of the world."

Obama went to Nelson Mandela's funeral – but spurned Justice Scalia's. He claimed to be born in Kenya to his own publisher, instigating the "birther controversy" he later snidely mocked.

Obama identifies with third-worlders, not Americans. It would fit a pattern for him to choose the side of Mexican illegals over American citizens and over U.S. immigration law.

Third, there is precedent for a mass pardon. In 1977, Jimmy Carter pardoned hundreds of thousands of individuals who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.

Could Obama trump Trump by issuing a blanket lame-duck pardon? He could, and I think he would. The Democratic Party has abandoned the white native-born American working class. Its core constituencies are liberal whites with a globalist outlook and minority racial groups who vote on the basis of identity politics. Pardoning illegals after a Trump victory would strengthen the 21st-century Democratic Party base and cement Obama's legacy on the globalist, anti-American, anti-white, pro-minority left. It's a win-win for him.

The possibility that Obama's last official act will be to "fundamentally transform" America by making 12 to 20 million third-worlders permanent residents of the U.S. is something to think about more and more as November approaches and the Trump juggernaut rolls on.

With every passing day, Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency increase.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The dismantling of public education and Obama's education legacy

Part 1

By Nancy Hanover 3 June 2016

Under the Obama administration, public education in America has faced an unremitting assault. Never in the history of the United States has schooling—from kindergarten through college—sustained such massive funding cuts as it has during the last seven-and-a-half years.It has become national policy to de-fund education claiming there is “no money,” for school improvements and the hiring of more teachers even as the US engages in a massive expansion of military and intelligence funding to escalate its unending wars abroad.

There is symmetry involved: we are witnessing a war on public education waged by the ruling elite. Funds have been drained from classrooms and art, music, foreign languages and gym have become luxuries. Up-to-date textbooks and even qualified teachers are disappearing. Sports and other extra-curricular activities have become “pay for play” among endless miscellaneous fees imposed by public schools on families. There has been a proliferation of highly lucrative for-profit “cyber” schools where children’s education consists of sitting in front a computer at home. Public colleges are poorly funded, increasingly overcrowded and have become the source of a lifetime of debt peonage for those choosing to attend.

Paralleling the ever-escalating growth of social inequality, the once-touted “universal leveler,” public education, has become an openly class-based system.

The financial elite and its political spokesmen—both Democrat and Republican—in the White House, the state legislatures and at the local level—have used the economic crisis from 2008 on as a pretext to transfer vast sums out of social programs including education. In addition to funding military aggression overseas, they have provided huge tax cuts for the wealthy and business opportunities in the for-profit sector at the direct expense of educating the working class. Meanwhile Wall Street stock exchanges, corporate cash hoards,and CEO pay have shot to record highs as the financial aristocracy essentially loots society.

This social counterrevolution has been aided and abetted by the collaboration of the teachers’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been diverted from union dues to support Obama, and his heir apparent Hillary Clinton.

The AFT supported Obama in both 2008 and 2012 and was the first to officially endorse Clinton. The NEA has likewise thrown tens of millions of dollars behind their Clinton who as first lady in the 1990s supported her husband’s right-wing policy of “school choice,” which paved the way for the expansion of charter schools.

Corralling workers’ opposition behind Democratic Party politicians has been an essential part of the unions’ suppression of the independent struggles by education workers. The AFT and NEA have worked overtime to betray struggles when they threatened to challenge the status quo, as in Chicago 2012 and 2016, or attempt to divert or snuff out resistance, as in the Detroit teacher walkouts of 2016. Ever eager to remain a partner in education “reform” with the capitalist politicians and fully on board with pro-war policies and nationalism, there is no line the unions will not cross in order to retain their dues base and “seat at the table.”

It is no exaggeration to say that public education has been upended nationally as a result. Under Obama, there has been a net loss of 300,000 school workers while K-12 student enrollment has actually increased. It has become routine for states to cut as much as $1,000 per pupil in a single year from their public schools. In North Carolina and Florida, staggering drops in per-pupil funding have been enacted, from over $10,000 to some $7,000 respectively. Such draconian cuts barely make the news.

Obama’s signature education policy, Race To The Top (RTTT), continued but vastly intensified the pro-charter and edu-business agenda of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act (whose co-sponsor was the liberal Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy). Charter schools, largely run by for-profit management companies and routinely channeling huge sums to outsourcing business entities, mushroomed under the demands of the federal RTTT competition. The federal government dangled competitive grant money, forcing school districts already reeling from state budget cuts to compete with each other in the race to enact privatization policies. At the same time, hedge fund managers and private investors dove into the education services and high-stakes testing market.

By 2012, 42 out of 50 states passed legislation authorizing charter schools, many allowing teachers without state certification or with “alternate certification.” In general, these new instructors were paid less, had no tenure rights and received substandard health and pension benefits, if any at all. By 2012, the number of charter school students had doubled from their 2007 numbers.

New Orleans was the first city to be entirely charterized, with Detroit now facing the same threat. The city with the highest numbers of charters is Los Angeles, where a reported 100,000 students now attend charters, channeling $500 million annually out of the public school budgets. LA is followed by New York and Philadelphia. Cleveland has 39 percent of their students in charters and Toledo 29 percent with dozens of other American cities running a hybridized traditional/charter educational system.

Under pressure from RTTT, the states not only enacted the legal modifications to make it far easier for charters to open, in many cases they then imposed substantial portions of charter school operating costs on local districts.

In Pennsylvania, where local school districts must transfer a portion of funds to charters, this has led to the near bankruptcy of both Philadelphia and Chester schools. While Philadelphia operated at a $70 million deficit between 2008 and 2013, the city’s charter schools ran a surplus of $117 million. For the 2013-14 school year, the district paid $146 million in interest, with a structural deficit totaling more than half a billion dollars. The district has closed more than 30 schools and reduced 20 percent of its staff since 2012.

The teachers’ unions not only failed to oppose the exponential growth of for-profit charters, their well-heeled union bureaucrats put a major effort into “organizing” them, turning the charters into dues-collection sources.

Not unsurprisingly, Obama’s final education policy initiative—the Every Student Succeeds Act—includes no meaningful new money for traditional public schools but provides substantial new incentives for charter schools. His 2016 budget called for a 50 percent increase in federal support to charters as well, which received bipartisan support.

As part of its promotion of charters, the US Department of Education and the federally funded AmeriCorps have joined with major big business foundations [Walton, Broad] to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Teach for America (TFA). TFA is both a beneficiary and a driver of the privatization movement. Students in TFA-run classrooms, however, are consigned to untrained young adults—who generally quit after one or two years—in what has aptly been called the “amateurization” of teaching. The TFA model has been used to successfully undercut teachers’ rights, pay standards and pension benefits.

In another aspect of the criminal destruction of America’s public education system, thousands of school buildings across the country are rotting on their foundations. The scandalous and unsafe conditions of schools in Detroit and the fact that lead piping was poisoning students is just the tip of the iceberg. The average age of school buildings in the US is 44 years old, with many more than twice that age. A recent study calls for $145 billion per year to bring America’s K-12 public school facilities up to code, a sum that is not even remotely being considered.

Elementary and high schools have, in fact, cut capital spending by 37 percent between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 38 states cutting spending. Nevada, for example, cut capital spending by a massive 81 percent. Some states, such as Michigan and 11 others, provide absolutely no support for capital construction. Moreover, the federal government does not provide support for school building or maintenance. This requires hard-hit localities to fund their school buildings through supplemental property tax levies.

Scandalously, public schools have increasingly become of the objects of charities, GoFundMe campaigns and big business philanthropies.

.................... from day one the OBOMB has given the American middle class the shaft and then told us how good it felt to him!THE BANKSTER-OWNED PSYCHOPATH'S REALITY: I FUCKED THEM ALL OVER FOR MY BANKSTERS AND TOLD THEM IS WAS CALLED "HOPE AND CHANGE"!"After eight years of the candidate of “hope and change,” a period in which 95 percent of income gains (since 2009) have gone to the top one percent, there is a general sense that the entire political system is rotten and the economic order is rigged."

Obama to American youth: Stop complaining, things have never been better!

By Niles Niemuth 17 May 2016

Niles Niemuth is the Socialist Equality Party's candidate for vice president in the United States
US President Barack Obama used his commencement address Sunday at Rutgers University in New Jersey to express contempt for those who are supporting either the campaigns of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or self-proclaimed socialist Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders.
While the media has focused on Obama’s thinly-veiled swipes against Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexico border and his foreign policy, more significant was the president’s clear rebuke of students and others for supporting Sanders.

The conclusion to be drawn from his speech is that workers—and particularly youth—need to stop complaining and do what they are told. Obama insisted, in what has become his mantra, that things have never been better in America and chastised young people for supporting calls for a “political revolution.”

In a reference to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has promised that if elected he will “Make America Great Again,” Obama insisted that social and economic conditions have never been better than they are now. “In fact, by almost every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago.”

Among other trends, Obama cited the decline in crime rates, teenage pregnancies, the percentage of people living in poverty and an overall increase in life expectancy as proof that life in America is better than it has ever been. He also cited the fact that a greater share of Americans have a college education and more blacks and Latinos sit on corporate boards and hold political office than ever before.

In the course of his remarks, Obama complained that access to the Internet and smart phones has “in some ways… made us more confident in our ignorance… We have to agree that facts and evidence matter. And we got to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable to know what the heck they’re talking about.”

It would have been appropriate for someone in the audience to have shouted out at this point, “Physician, heal thyself!”

Obama’s rose-colored account flies in the face of the reality of life confronted by the vast majority of Americans in 2016. Over the last eight years workers have experienced declining incomes and wages, and rising death rates among working class men and women due to an increase in suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism. Entire cities and regions have been devastated by decades of deindustrialization, with the rate of poverty higher than ever in urban and suburban areas across the country.Obama was addressing an audience that is part of a generation saddled with more than $1.3 trillion dollars in student loan debt. The first generation worse off than their parents, millions of college graduates who entered the job market after the 2008 economic crisis are either unemployed or underemployed, with an average student loan debt of $30,000.A majority of individuals with onerous debt payments are unable to afford to buy a car, buy their own house and many delay getting engaged or married. A recent poll found that 77 percent of respondents found it more difficult to live due to their student loan debt.After eight years of the candidate of “hope and change,” a period in which 95 percent of income gains (since 2009) have gone to the top one percent, there is a general sense that the entire political system is rotten and the economic order is rigged.
Obama’s remarks expressed concern within the ruling class not over Sanders himself, who is working to redirect opposition back into the Democratic Party. Rather, it is over the anti-capitalist sentiments that are motiving an overwhelming turn out among young voters for the self-declared socialist.He lectured students with a potted version of history in which activists and organizers engaged in “alliance-building and deal-making” are the source of all social progress in America. Lest they get any ideas, Obama warned his young audience that change “didn’t happen because some massivepolitical revolution occurred.”

Even as Obama argued that social and economic conditions in America are better than ever, he insisted they could be even better if only more people, especially students, voted in even greater numbers for the Democrats! He cited 2014 voter turnout, which was the lowest since the World War II era, and warned that “apathy has consequences.”

Obama cynically counseled the students to “have faith in democracy,” by which he meant they should support a political set-up entirely controlled by and subservient to the interests of the wealthiest individuals and corporations. The accusation that those who do not vote are apathetic is slander. The general sentiment is not apathy, but hostility and anger over a corrupt two-party system over which Obama himself presides.

In an additional jab at students, Obama went on to criticize protests at Rutgers over a previous announcement that Condoleezza Rice, one of George W. Bush’s secretaries of state, would speak at a commencement. That students should object to having to listen to a war criminal upon their graduation is, according to Obama, an outrageous violation of the principle that is is necessary to “listen to those who don’t agree with you.” Obama perhaps worried that he could be the object of similar protests and denunciations in the not-so-distant future.

Even as he admitted that “big money in politics is a huge problem,” he cynically asserted that “the system isn’t as rigged as you think, and it certainly is not as hopeless as you think…if you vote and you elect a majority that represents your views, you will get what you want. And if you opt out, or stop paying attention, you won’t. It’s that simple.”

It was apparently lost on the president that the history of his own administration is ample proof that the anger and hostility he sought to counter is, in fact, entirely justified.

"The slump in major chain store sales reflects the impact of a vast reordering of class relations in the US, accelerated in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, that has benefited the rich and the super-rich and devastated large sections of the working population. The policies of the Obama administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve—flooding the financial markets with virtually free cash while imposing brutal cuts in social programs and wages—have facilitated a further growth of financial parasitism and speculation."

"Corporate profits and CEO pay have soared not on the basis of productive investment, but rather through new forms of financial gambling and the inflation of stock prices. The result is a further growth of social inequality and a deepening of the crisis of the real economy."OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The rich get super rich illegals get our jobs and billions in welfare!This analysis has the economic facts precisely backwards: Economic growth benefitted Americans up and down the income distribution until the Great Recession. Since then, Americans have struggled considerably.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The president argued his administration deserves credit for the recovery thus far. If so, he has engineered the weakest recovery of the post-war era.

President Barack Obama at Concord Community High School in Elkhart, Indiana, on June 1. (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/UPI/Newscom)

President Barack Obama took an economic victory lap in Elkhart, Indiana, on Wednesday.In a major speech he argued his policies have brought the economy back. He blamed remaining economic weaknesses on trends preceding his administration.

This analysis has the economic facts precisely backwards: Economic growth benefitted Americans up and down the income distribution until the Great Recession. Since then, Americans have struggled considerably.

Obama argued his policies have brought the economy back. While labor market conditions have certainly improved from the depths of the recession—the official unemployment rate has even returned to pre-recession levels—these numbers do not tell the whole story.

BLOG: IN THE LAST TWO YEARS MORE THAN 3 MILLION ILLEGALS HAVE CLIMBED OUR BORDERS, JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS.

Millions of working-age Americans stopped looking for work during the recession. Many have not returned to the labor market. The working-age labor force participation rate remains 2 percentage points below pre-recession levels. The government does not count these ex-workers as unemployed— even if they would have jobs in a stronger economy.

This explains why the unemployment rate has officially recovered in the Elkhart metropolitan area despite it still having fewer jobs today than in 2007.

Workers also take significantly longer to find new jobs today. The average jobless worker still spends over six months unemployed. This recovery has gone far slower than the White House promised when proposing Obama’s recovery plan.

… where we haven’t finished the job, where folks have good reason to feel anxious, is addressing some of the longer-term trends in the economy—that started long before I was elected—that make working families feel less secure. These are trends that have been happening for decades now and that we’ve got to do more to reverse.

This argument rewrites economic history.

Until the recession family incomes were growing up and down the income ladder. Congressional Budget Office data show market incomes for the middle quintile of (non-elderly) households grew by a third between 1979 and 2007.

Other academic economists estimate higher middle class income growth over that period. Market incomes for families in the bottom quintile grew even faster—by more than 50 percent.

Unsurprisingly, most Americans were happy with the state of the economy then. In February 2007, Gallup polled Americans‘ perceptions of the state of the economy. Forty-three percent said “excellent” or “good.” Only 16 percent answered “poor.”

Then the recession hit and the recovery dragged on. Between 2007 and 2011, middle class households’ market incomes dropped by a tenth (the Congressional Budget Office data only goes through 2011). More Americans today tell Gallup they think the economy is in poor shape than in excellent or good condition. It’s hard to blame this newfound dissatisfaction on long-term trends.The president argued his administration deserves credit for the recovery thus far. If so, he has engineered the weakest recovery of the post-war era.

As a research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, James Sherk researches ways to promote competition and mobility in the workforce rather than erect barriers that prevent workers from getting ahead. Read his research.

"The incompetent Presidency of Barack Obama has critically

damaged our country, but the havoc was supposed to end and

recovery to begin in January 2017. Now it seems that the

ordeal will continue for at least another four years, since the

probable Republican and Democrat nominees are both unfit to

serve as our president. The America we have known and seek

to restore may not survive this additional adversity."

Warnings of slump in US economy

By Nick Beams 28 May 2016

Despite an upward revision in the Commerce Department’s estimate for first-quarter economic growth, the US economy continues to show signs of a far-reaching stagnation. The Commerce Department said Thursday that US gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of .8 percent, up from its earlier estimate of .5 percent.

Even though the upward revision was lower than expected, and pointed to a growth rate almost indistinguishable from stagnation, the result prompted media comments that the American economy appears to be “picking up speed” and the economic situation was “better than had been thought.”
Regardless of such proclamations, key indicators point to deepening trends toward economic stagnation in both the short and long term.

On Wednesday, technology company Microsoft announced 1,850 job cuts in its smartphone division, then on Thursday retailer Sears reported a loss of $471 million, after revenue fell by over 8 percent.Next month will mark the seventh anniversary of the period of economic expansion that began with the official end of the recession in 2009—the fourth-longest recovery since the end of World War 2. But it is the slowest post-recession expansion in the post-war period.

The main factor is the fall in business investment, the key driver of economic growth in the capitalist economy.

“Spending on some of the building blocks of business—such as machines, computers and steel—is slipping,” an article in the Wall Street Journal noted. “Such expenditures are an important ingredient in improving employee productivity, workers’ wages and corporate profits. A lack of investment risks trapping the economy in a low-growth mode.”

The Commerce Department reported that orders for non-defence capital goods, excluding aircraft, an indicator of business investment, fell by 0.8 percent in April, bringing the total decline since April 2014 to almost 12 percent.

Well-known economic forecaster Diane Swonk told the Wall Street Journal it was “disturbing that businesses’ cash flow has improved dramatically and they have access to cheap debt, but they’ve deployed that on dividends and buybacks instead of investing in the future.”

Earlier this week, a report by Moody’s pointed out that US non-financial corporations were sitting on a cash stockpile of $1.7 trillion, almost one-third of it held by five major hi-tech US companies, a significant statistic given that these firms are regarded as a major driving force of the US economy.
The lack of business investment in the real economy, as opposed to financial speculation, finds expression in productivity data.

In a speech on Thursday, reviewing trends in the US economy, Jerome Powell, a Federal Reserve Board governor, noted that labour productivity in the US had increased by only 0.5 percent a year since 2010, the slowest five-year growth rate since World War 2 and about one quarter of the average post-war rate. He noted that this was a trend that extended across the world economy.

The productivity slowdown is expected to continue, with the Conference Board, a major US economic think tank, warning that it could go negative this year for the first time in more than three decades.

According to Powell, estimates of the long-run potential growth of the US economy have dropped from 3 percent prior to the financial crisis to 2 percent “with much of the decline a function of slower productivity growth.”

A key factor in holding back productivity in recent years, he said, was the meagre growth in the business sector’s capital stock, consistent with “the weak recovery in demand.” But other longer-term factors may also be at work. Powell pointed that the so-called total factor productivity (TFP) growth, regarded as a measure of the impact of technological innovation, was also falling.

“A broad decline in the dynamism in our economy may also be contributing to lower TFP. There is strong evidence that the slowdown in TFP growth in the United States preceded the financial crisis, particularly in sectors that produce or use information technologies,” he said.

In other words, there is a basic dysfunction in the workings of the American economy in which the cycle of business investment in the expectation of higher profits leads to higher productivity, economic expansion, resulting in further investment, has broken down.

Other economists, most notably former Clinton treasury secretary Larry Summers, have pointed to the development of secular stagnation—a situation which characterised the decade of the 1930s—in which the supply of savings continually outstrips the demand for investment, because of diminished profit expectations, leading to low growth, falling productivity and even outright contraction.

While not directly referring to this phenomenon, Powell alluded to it, posing the question: “What if the pessimists are right and productivity growth remains low for another decade, or indefinitely? The consequences would include lower potential growth and relatively lower living standards. Our longer-term fiscal challenges would be significantly greater.”

The long-term slowdown in the US economy is both contributing to the ongoing stagnation in the global economy and is in turn impacted by it. But there is no relief in sight from this quarter and no prospect at all of coordinated action by the major economic powers to stimulate global demand. In fact, the G7 summit meeting, which concluded on Friday, revealed that the divisions among them are widening.

The summit communiqué noted that since the last meeting of the group in April 2015 “downside risks to the global economic outlook have increased” and that “weak demand and unaddressed structural problems are key factors weighing on actual and potential growth.” There were also “potential shocks” of a noneconomic origin—a reference to the increasingly tense geopolitical situation.

But while it noted that risks had increased, the G7 moved further away from trying to combat them.
The G7 communiqué stated that global growth “is our urgent priority” but then laid out a meaningless set of words to cover over the differences between the participants.

“Taking into account country-specific circumstances,” the communiqué stated, “we commit to strengthening our economic policy responses…and to employ a more forceful and more balanced policy mix, in order to achieve a strong, sustainable and balanced growth pattern.”

The communiqué allows Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to claim that he secured some movement on his demand for global stimulus measures while enabling Germany and the UK, the main opponents, to point to the reference to “country-specific circumstances” in order to continue their austerity agendas.

It was, as the Financial Times noted, another example of the work of G7 resolution drafters who are “masters at the art of creating apparent agreement where none exists.”

As the summit was taking place, new data from Japan pointed to the global deflationary trends that have increasingly gripped its economy. The consumer price index for April fell by 0.3 percent in the year to April, following a decline of 0.1 percent in March with indications from preliminary forecasts that it will show an even larger decline next month.

Falling prices will put increased pressure on the Bank of Japan to further ease monetary policy and may even lead to direct intervention by government authorities in currency markets to lower the value of the yen in an effort to boost the economy, despite warnings from the US against such action and a declaration in the G7 communiqué that countries should not engage in competitive currency devaluations.

Billary and Hillary: these fuckers would parasite off anyone and anything that moves and smells of money!

Hillary University: Bill Clinton

Bagged $16.46 Million from

For-Profit College as State

Dept. Funneled $55 Million

Back

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.

In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.

As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.

“I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere,” agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. “This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you.”

Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton’s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. “They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge,” said Leite.

Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate’s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate’s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll, according to Bloomberg:

A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

Throughout ten Democratic Party debates, Establishment Media have not asked Hillary Clinton a single question about she and her husband’s for-profit education scam.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The dismantling of public education and Obama's education legacy

Part 1

By Nancy Hanover 3 June 2016

Under the Obama administration, public education in America has faced an unremitting assault. Never in the history of the United States has schooling—from kindergarten through college—sustained such massive funding cuts as it has during the last seven-and-a-half years.
It has become national policy to de-fund education claiming there is “no money,” for school improvements and the hiring of more teachers even as the US engages in a massive expansion of military and intelligence funding to escalate its unending wars abroad.

There is symmetry involved: we are witnessing a war on public education waged by the ruling elite. Funds have been drained from classrooms and art, music, foreign languages and gym have become luxuries. Up-to-date textbooks and even qualified teachers are disappearing. Sports and other extra-curricular activities have become “pay for play” among endless miscellaneous fees imposed by public schools on families. There has been a proliferation of highly lucrative for-profit “cyber” schools where children’s education consists of sitting in front a computer at home. Public colleges are poorly funded, increasingly overcrowded and have become the source of a lifetime of debt peonage for those choosing to attend.

Paralleling the ever-escalating growth of social inequality, the once-touted “universal leveler,” public education, has become an openly class-based system.

The financial elite and its political spokesmen—both Democrat and Republican—in the White House, the state legislatures and at the local level—have used the economic crisis from 2008 on as a pretext to transfer vast sums out of social programs including education. In addition to funding military aggression overseas, they have provided huge tax cuts for the wealthy and business opportunities in the for-profit sector at the direct expense of educating the working class. Meanwhile Wall Street stock exchanges, corporate cash hoards,and CEO pay have shot to record highs as the financial aristocracy essentially loots society.

This social counterrevolution has been aided and abetted by the collaboration of the teachers’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been diverted from union dues to support Obama, and his heir apparent Hillary Clinton.

The AFT supported Obama in both 2008 and 2012 and was the first to officially endorse Clinton. The NEA has likewise thrown tens of millions of dollars behind their Clinton who as first lady in the 1990s supported her husband’s right-wing policy of “school choice,” which paved the way for the expansion of charter schools.

Corralling workers’ opposition behind Democratic Party politicians has been an essential part of the unions’ suppression of the independent struggles by education workers. The AFT and NEA have worked overtime to betray struggles when they threatened to challenge the status quo, as in Chicago 2012 and 2016, or attempt to divert or snuff out resistance, as in the Detroit teacher walkouts of 2016. Ever eager to remain a partner in education “reform” with the capitalist politicians and fully on board with pro-war policies and nationalism, there is no line the unions will not cross in order to retain their dues base and “seat at the table.”

It is no exaggeration to say that public education has been upended nationally as a result. Under Obama, there has been a net loss of 300,000 school workers while K-12 student enrollment has actually increased. It has become routine for states to cut as much as $1,000 per pupil in a single year from their public schools. In North Carolina and Florida, staggering drops in per-pupil funding have been enacted, from over $10,000 to some $7,000 respectively. Such draconian cuts barely make the news.

Obama’s signature education policy, Race To The Top (RTTT), continued but vastly intensified the pro-charter and edu-business agenda of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act (whose co-sponsor was the liberal Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy). Charter schools, largely run by for-profit management companies and routinely channeling huge sums to outsourcing business entities, mushroomed under the demands of the federal RTTT competition. The federal government dangled competitive grant money, forcing school districts already reeling from state budget cuts to compete with each other in the race to enact privatization policies. At the same time, hedge fund managers and private investors dove into the education services and high-stakes testing market.

By 2012, 42 out of 50 states passed legislation authorizing charter schools, many allowing teachers without state certification or with “alternate certification.” In general, these new instructors were paid less, had no tenure rights and received substandard health and pension benefits, if any at all. By 2012, the number of charter school students had doubled from their 2007 numbers.

New Orleans was the first city to be entirely charterized, with Detroit now facing the same threat. The city with the highest numbers of charters is Los Angeles, where a reported 100,000 students now attend charters, channeling $500 million annually out of the public school budgets. LA is followed by New York and Philadelphia. Cleveland has 39 percent of their students in charters and Toledo 29 percent with dozens of other American cities running a hybridized traditional/charter educational system.

Under pressure from RTTT, the states not only enacted the legal modifications to make it far easier for charters to open, in many cases they then imposed substantial portions of charter school operating costs on local districts.

In Pennsylvania, where local school districts must transfer a portion of funds to charters, this has led to the near bankruptcy of both Philadelphia and Chester schools. While Philadelphia operated at a $70 million deficit between 2008 and 2013, the city’s charter schools ran a surplus of $117 million. For the 2013-14 school year, the district paid $146 million in interest, with a structural deficit totaling more than half a billion dollars. The district has closed more than 30 schools and reduced 20 percent of its staff since 2012.

The teachers’ unions not only failed to oppose the exponential growth of for-profit charters, their well-heeled union bureaucrats put a major effort into “organizing” them, turning the charters into dues-collection sources.

Not unsurprisingly, Obama’s final education policy initiative—the Every Student Succeeds Act—includes no meaningful new money for traditional public schools but provides substantial new incentives for charter schools. His 2016 budget called for a 50 percent increase in federal support to charters as well, which received bipartisan support.

As part of its promotion of charters, the US Department of Education and the federally funded AmeriCorps have joined with major big business foundations [Walton, Broad] to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Teach for America (TFA). TFA is both a beneficiary and a driver of the privatization movement. Students in TFA-run classrooms, however, are consigned to untrained young adults—who generally quit after one or two years—in what has aptly been called the “amateurization” of teaching. The TFA model has been used to successfully undercut teachers’ rights, pay standards and pension benefits.

In another aspect of the criminal destruction of America’s public education system, thousands of school buildings across the country are rotting on their foundations. The scandalous and unsafe conditions of schools in Detroit and the fact that lead piping was poisoning students is just the tip of the iceberg. The average age of school buildings in the US is 44 years old, with many more than twice that age. A recent study calls for $145 billion per year to bring America’s K-12 public school facilities up to code, a sum that is not even remotely being considered.

Elementary and high schools have, in fact, cut capital spending by 37 percent between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 38 states cutting spending. Nevada, for example, cut capital spending by a massive 81 percent. Some states, such as Michigan and 11 others, provide absolutely no support for capital construction. Moreover, the federal government does not provide support for school building or maintenance. This requires hard-hit localities to fund their school buildings through supplemental property tax levies.

Scandalously, public schools have increasingly become of the objects of charities, GoFundMe campaigns and big business philanthropies.

Billary and Hillary: these fuckers would parasite off anyone and anything that moves and smells of money!

Hillary University: Bill Clinton

Bagged $16.46 Million from

For-Profit College as State

Dept. Funneled $55 Million

Back

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.

In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.

As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.

“I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere,” agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. “This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you.”

Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton’s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. “They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge,” said Leite.

Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate’s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate’s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll, according to Bloomberg:

A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

Throughout ten Democratic Party debates, Establishment Media have not asked Hillary Clinton a single question about she and her husband’s for-profit education scam.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The dismantling of public education and Obama's education legacy

Part 1

By Nancy Hanover 3 June 2016

Under the Obama administration, public education in America has faced an unremitting assault. Never in the history of the United States has schooling—from kindergarten through college—sustained such massive funding cuts as it has during the last seven-and-a-half years.
It has become national policy to de-fund education claiming there is “no money,” for school improvements and the hiring of more teachers even as the US engages in a massive expansion of military and intelligence funding to escalate its unending wars abroad.

There is symmetry involved: we are witnessing a war on public education waged by the ruling elite. Funds have been drained from classrooms and art, music, foreign languages and gym have become luxuries. Up-to-date textbooks and even qualified teachers are disappearing. Sports and other extra-curricular activities have become “pay for play” among endless miscellaneous fees imposed by public schools on families. There has been a proliferation of highly lucrative for-profit “cyber” schools where children’s education consists of sitting in front a computer at home. Public colleges are poorly funded, increasingly overcrowded and have become the source of a lifetime of debt peonage for those choosing to attend.

Paralleling the ever-escalating growth of social inequality, the once-touted “universal leveler,” public education, has become an openly class-based system.

The financial elite and its political spokesmen—both Democrat and Republican—in the White House, the state legislatures and at the local level—have used the economic crisis from 2008 on as a pretext to transfer vast sums out of social programs including education. In addition to funding military aggression overseas, they have provided huge tax cuts for the wealthy and business opportunities in the for-profit sector at the direct expense of educating the working class. Meanwhile Wall Street stock exchanges, corporate cash hoards,and CEO pay have shot to record highs as the financial aristocracy essentially loots society.

This social counterrevolution has been aided and abetted by the collaboration of the teachers’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been diverted from union dues to support Obama, and his heir apparent Hillary Clinton.

The AFT supported Obama in both 2008 and 2012 and was the first to officially endorse Clinton. The NEA has likewise thrown tens of millions of dollars behind their Clinton who as first lady in the 1990s supported her husband’s right-wing policy of “school choice,” which paved the way for the expansion of charter schools.

Corralling workers’ opposition behind Democratic Party politicians has been an essential part of the unions’ suppression of the independent struggles by education workers. The AFT and NEA have worked overtime to betray struggles when they threatened to challenge the status quo, as in Chicago 2012 and 2016, or attempt to divert or snuff out resistance, as in the Detroit teacher walkouts of 2016. Ever eager to remain a partner in education “reform” with the capitalist politicians and fully on board with pro-war policies and nationalism, there is no line the unions will not cross in order to retain their dues base and “seat at the table.”

It is no exaggeration to say that public education has been upended nationally as a result. Under Obama, there has been a net loss of 300,000 school workers while K-12 student enrollment has actually increased. It has become routine for states to cut as much as $1,000 per pupil in a single year from their public schools. In North Carolina and Florida, staggering drops in per-pupil funding have been enacted, from over $10,000 to some $7,000 respectively. Such draconian cuts barely make the news.

Obama’s signature education policy, Race To The Top (RTTT), continued but vastly intensified the pro-charter and edu-business agenda of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act (whose co-sponsor was the liberal Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy). Charter schools, largely run by for-profit management companies and routinely channeling huge sums to outsourcing business entities, mushroomed under the demands of the federal RTTT competition. The federal government dangled competitive grant money, forcing school districts already reeling from state budget cuts to compete with each other in the race to enact privatization policies. At the same time, hedge fund managers and private investors dove into the education services and high-stakes testing market.

By 2012, 42 out of 50 states passed legislation authorizing charter schools, many allowing teachers without state certification or with “alternate certification.” In general, these new instructors were paid less, had no tenure rights and received substandard health and pension benefits, if any at all. By 2012, the number of charter school students had doubled from their 2007 numbers.

New Orleans was the first city to be entirely charterized, with Detroit now facing the same threat. The city with the highest numbers of charters is Los Angeles, where a reported 100,000 students now attend charters, channeling $500 million annually out of the public school budgets. LA is followed by New York and Philadelphia. Cleveland has 39 percent of their students in charters and Toledo 29 percent with dozens of other American cities running a hybridized traditional/charter educational system.

Under pressure from RTTT, the states not only enacted the legal modifications to make it far easier for charters to open, in many cases they then imposed substantial portions of charter school operating costs on local districts.

In Pennsylvania, where local school districts must transfer a portion of funds to charters, this has led to the near bankruptcy of both Philadelphia and Chester schools. While Philadelphia operated at a $70 million deficit between 2008 and 2013, the city’s charter schools ran a surplus of $117 million. For the 2013-14 school year, the district paid $146 million in interest, with a structural deficit totaling more than half a billion dollars. The district has closed more than 30 schools and reduced 20 percent of its staff since 2012.

The teachers’ unions not only failed to oppose the exponential growth of for-profit charters, their well-heeled union bureaucrats put a major effort into “organizing” them, turning the charters into dues-collection sources.

Not unsurprisingly, Obama’s final education policy initiative—the Every Student Succeeds Act—includes no meaningful new money for traditional public schools but provides substantial new incentives for charter schools. His 2016 budget called for a 50 percent increase in federal support to charters as well, which received bipartisan support.

As part of its promotion of charters, the US Department of Education and the federally funded AmeriCorps have joined with major big business foundations [Walton, Broad] to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Teach for America (TFA). TFA is both a beneficiary and a driver of the privatization movement. Students in TFA-run classrooms, however, are consigned to untrained young adults—who generally quit after one or two years—in what has aptly been called the “amateurization” of teaching. The TFA model has been used to successfully undercut teachers’ rights, pay standards and pension benefits.

In another aspect of the criminal destruction of America’s public education system, thousands of school buildings across the country are rotting on their foundations. The scandalous and unsafe conditions of schools in Detroit and the fact that lead piping was poisoning students is just the tip of the iceberg. The average age of school buildings in the US is 44 years old, with many more than twice that age. A recent study calls for $145 billion per year to bring America’s K-12 public school facilities up to code, a sum that is not even remotely being considered.

Elementary and high schools have, in fact, cut capital spending by 37 percent between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 38 states cutting spending. Nevada, for example, cut capital spending by a massive 81 percent. Some states, such as Michigan and 11 others, provide absolutely no support for capital construction. Moreover, the federal government does not provide support for school building or maintenance. This requires hard-hit localities to fund their school buildings through supplemental property tax levies.

Scandalously, public schools have increasingly become of the objects of charities, GoFundMe campaigns and big business philanthropies.